What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah 5 stars

[Sue]

This is a wonderful and engaging collection of short stories, focusing on the lives of young Nigerian girls.

I especially enjoyed the mix of magical realism and (somewhat magical) Nigerian folklore in some of the stories. Two stories in particular really stood out for me:

In the title story "What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky", scientists have discovered an equation that explains the full depth and breadth of human experience. Some gifted individuals are able to manipulate this equation to "fix" what's wrong in another person's life - in particular, the story focuses on a young woman who can remove emotional or physical pain from another person - but she herself ends up carrying that accumulated pain.

And in "Who Will Greet You at Home", young women create babies out of various materials. If they can keep the baby alive for a full year, it will turn into a human. In the story, the girl's mother wants her to create a baby out of mud, since mud babies are sturdy and usually survive. But she wants a softer, more beautiful start for her baby. So she tries yarn, then paper, and finally hair to create her baby - with disastrous results.